


our lives run parallel

by underdebate



Category: inFAMOUS (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, past!kessler, sad family what-if feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:12:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underdebate/pseuds/underdebate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the things he doesn't remember are a blessing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our lives run parallel

**14:05:39**   
**T-MINUS 15 DAYS TO BLAST.**

 

Sometimes the things he doesn't remember are a blessing.

 

He doesn't remember his daughters' faces. As a whole, his memories are shattered, broken with the force of too many tragedies, too much loss, too many years spent biding his time in the dark. He doesn't remember what it felt like to hold his twins for the first time-- Leah and Catherine, dark-haired like their mother, barely a trace of him in their features, that much he remembers. Whether Leah walked before Catherine. Their first words. Crying in the hospital; tiny mewls and tears in the doctor's arms before they were passed to their mother, and to him.

 

He remembers in pieces.

 

Their lives are little more than half-formed shapes in his mind: their birth is a memory he clings to for fear it will evaporate with every sunrise; their death, a memory he cannot escape. Everything in between is a blur. He weighs them both in his hands, static memories.

 

"Do you have children, Sebastian?"

 

It's early afternoon. He doesn't know when he started calling his head scientist by his first name. Wolfe looks up, hunched over his desk and scribbling into notes, peering through glasses under the brightness of his reading lamp to where Kessler waits, an eyebrow raised.

 

"I don't, no." Wolfe gives him a curious look, resting his elbows on the desk. "Yourself?"

 

Kessler turns, a brief shake of his head, hands clasped behind his back as he glances around the room. Wolfe's lab is organized chaos: papers everywhere, books, small machines. He is a scientist. Creator, not a father. He finds his attention drawn to a series of diagrams pinned to a cork board and goes to examine them.

 

Wolfe makes a small 'ah' noise. There's a knowing smile in his cultured voice when he speaks again. "I figured. You don't quite seem the family man, Kessler."

 

Amicable enough. The quiet afterwards is laden with the heaviness of Kessler's footsteps and the falling of dust particles caught in shafts of light. Wolfe's pen resumes its scratching against the paper.

 

"They died."

 

The pen stops, haltingly. "Kessler, I-- oh, heavens."

 

He waves a hand, dismissively. Wolfe, to his credit, doesn't seem fearful-- Kessler has killed men for less, but he's never told any of them about his family. He can sense the pity in his friend's voice, but it doesn't fall through, too laced with surprise and horror. It takes a moment to calm.

 

"How long ago?"

 

"Many years. A lifetime ago. It's not important."

 

Wolfe sets his pen down against the desk, sitting back in his chair. A troubled look passes over his face. "I'm sorry. I certainly didn't mean anything by that."

 

A tense sound escapes his lips, fading into what might have been a sigh, were he anyone else. "Your observations were not inaccurate, Sebastian."

 

Wolfe doesn't say 'if you'd like to talk about it--'; doesn't ask, 'how old were they?', doesn't ask whether they were boys or girls or even about their mother. Instead, he adjusts his glasses, rubs a hand over his face, and nods. The invitation nonetheless hangs in the air between them.

 

Kessler barely spares the doctor a glance before he leaves the room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**02:00:18**   
**T-PLUS 21 DAYS AFTER BLAST.**

 

Trish's grave is less than what she deserves, but more than he expected of his younger self. In grief, he waited for ruins: a path of destruction, his men wiped out.

 

Cole grieves quietly, though Kessler knows not without anger. Nevertheless, Trish's grave is built with careful hands: her body is covered and the location marked, and it's respectful and tender and serves as a reminder to the city that their protector will bury their dead well. She is remembered by those whose lives she saved and whose wounds she healed, and one by one, people learn of her death and visit the small, makeshift grave to pay their respects. The city seems quieter; Cole falls off the map for almost an entire day.

 

It's the second time in his lifetime that Kessler has seen his wife buried. He pushes forward, holding a new weight in his chest.

 

Late at night, when the city's ghosts have disappeared from the streets, Kessler visits the graveyard of Empire City's lost men and women. He brings with him a small handful of flowers: small blue statice buds, Queen Anne's lace, and kneeling down in the grass, he allows himself to mourn this time, if only for a few moments. The sharp cold pain welling up in his chest is welcomed and embraced. His days are numbered and he knows he has to do this before they're up.

 

Kneeling under the trees and night sky, he thinks of Leah and Catherine. Would they have had powers, a conduit gene that revealed itself later in life as they grew? If they'd grown?

 

He's killed them.

 

As he stands, preparing to leave, he knows someday, someday he will show Cole the place where he buried his daughters. Their daughters. It won't be while he lives-- not in this body, anyway. But Cole will carry him within his own mind for as long as he lives, and he won't forget.

 

Heading back out into the city streets, he is prepared to let go.

 

 


End file.
